by Dan Dillard
***
Charlotte greeted him with a mixture of anger and concern. He looked like a vagrant or a crazy person.
“Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick. What happened to you, Albert? You missed Clara’s birthday. You’re covered in filth and insect bites and you wouldn’t speak to me. What did you find? Why are you bleeding?”
“I’m fine,” he said and shoved past her. “I need food and sleep.”
“I prayed for you. The children and I, we prayed all evening.”
“There’s no need for that,” he said with an ice-cold look. “I said I was fine, now fix my breakfast.”
She snorted her disapproval, but made him a plate of eggs and warmed some bread. She poured him a cup full of coffee. He consumed all of it without a word, without as much as a glance in her direction. After breakfast, he collapsed in their bed and slept for a full twelve hours. Charlotte could not wake him. Not even when Big Jacques came to their door and knocked.
“Miss Charlotte, Odette ain’t come home,” Jacques said. “We’re worried about her. She never left like this before. Something’s wrong. I can feel it.”
“You just go on home now, Jacques. I’m sure she’ll turn up,” Charlotte said. It wasn’t a lack of concern for Odette, but the concern for her husband was a larger focus.
Albert slept through his children peeking in at him and asking, “What’s wrong with poppa?”
Charlotte didn’t know and told them so. “He’s sick,” she said. “He worked very hard yesterday. Sun sickness, maybe.”
Albert Jr. nodded as if the explanation was enough. Clara just watched, too young to understand any of it. Too young even to understand that her father had missed her birthday. Charlotte certainly didn’t understand. He had never skipped on the affairs of their children. He had always been a doting father. He had never spoken to her in the manner he spoke that day.
When Albert Sr. woke, he washed up and went back to the hole against his wife’s objections and the objections of the children.
“Poppa, don’t go,” Albert Jr. said.
Albert Sr. shoved the boy aside. “Out of my way,” he said.
Charlotte consoled her children and gave her husband a scolding look. He didn’t meet her eye.
“What happened to you?” she asked once more but only received his back as he walked out the front door of their home.